Transcript: Arbel Zinger (Melio): Real Impact Over Feature Counts in Product Management

Eyal David: [00:01] Hey friends, this is Eyal. You've reached Product Builder, and here you can listen to the most interesting product conversations. My journey began in 2012 when I learned what product is at my own startup. Since then I've worked in the industry, and since 2017 my company has consulted for a variety of companies. My drive is to help all of us become better product people. And before we start, if you're enjoying listening to Product Builder, please rate us five stars on Spotify. It'll give me great feedback that the podcast gives you value, and it would make me very happy. So come on, let's get started! Arbel, how's it going? What's up? You came from far away. From the other side of the curtain. How do you get back? By taxi, I think. Well, so... this might be the hottest day of the week. So yes, Arbel lives very close and also works very close.

Arbel Zinger: [00:49] Do you want to tell us a bit about where you come from? Today I work at Melio, I live in the same neighborhood as Hajaj. I've been doing product for many, many years. As a product manager, as a manager of product managers, as a manager of managers of product managers. And today you're actually a Senior Director at Melio. Yes, and I lead a few product groups. On the... we call it the experience side. On what users actually see. We build the same site — the same small business, or a bakery in Nashville, does a sign-in and... So let's talk a bit about the product. Okay. So Melio started out from a place that came to solve a centuries-old problem. Yes, today business people buy equipment from their suppliers, here and there. Let's go with that same bakery in Nashville, a real person. And then they need to pay their suppliers. Their suppliers often ask for the money in ways that aren't the most convenient. Let's start with a check. There's like eight trillion — that's the last number I remember — eight trillion dollars a year that go through checks in the United States. Sounds like — what even is a check, right. And Melio comes to solve this problem; it basically says, listen, you'll pay however you want. And the supplier — we'll make sure they receive it however they want. We basically started by breaking the symmetry. You pay by credit card, the supplier receives a check. You do a bank transfer, the supplier receives it by wire — by 'gold transfer,' let's call it. And it sounds very simplistic, but there's some money here. I mean, we go into the guts of the American banking system and do this conversion, which — if you think about it — today there are tons of small businesses, so much so that young people have never seen a check in their lives. So forget for a moment about saving time. Obviously there's nothing more annoying for that same bakery, than finishing the day and sitting at home, and starting their second job, as someone who has to sit and write checks, and document every invoice, every receipt with the check they issued. We basically save them this. That's where Melio started. We of course do tons of other things in the small-business world, that make their lives easier. Honestly it's an interesting product-market-fit story: when Melio started, the founders and the first employee, literally did it by hand. I mean, they took money from the customer, from the small business, by credit card, and wrote a check themselves from Melio. And it's an amazing way to understand that there was real value in it. Like, everything was run in a WhatsApp group, where the customer would send: listen, he needs to pay this person,

Eyal David: [03:16] I want to pay with this credit card, and he asked for a check. It's also amazing because back then, along the way, you also do some process to actually verify the person,

Arbel Zinger: [03:26] and see that they have enough funds and so on. Precisely because it was very small, it was probably easier to do that? It's much easier, because to this day we're very, very strong in restaurants and alcohol in the United States, in New York. And there too there's one of the hardest problems — there are all kinds of situations where you can't pay for alcohol in New York in advance, it has to be only on delivery, there are all kinds of stories like that. So yes, over time, scale is truly a huge problem, that we have an entire infra division dealing with — risk, payments, the whole set of problems. Which is probably part of the magic, right? It's most of the magic, I'd say. Like, I'm on the experience side, I think we beat all... all the veteran payment companies, let's call it.

Eyal David: [04:12] Because that's really the competitor — so maybe let's put a spotlight for a second on the industry, what it looks like. There's Melio and...

Arbel Zinger: [04:19] So there's Melio. Melio is maybe the first company to treat this problem a bit like B2C, right? Because it's B2SMB, but in the end it's a person, it's like a couple who run a mom-and-pop store, it's a bakery in Nashville, and again, I'll say this a lot, it's simply someone we're talking to — in my head it's very much that. On the other side we have tons of competitors all over the world, right? Starting with very large accounting companies, NetSuite for example, that's a big example, Intuit of course, which have been alive for many, many years, and provide, in terms of breadth, much greater breadth, right? It's all the accounting services. On the other hand, when a customer of ours enters our site, from their mobile phone, it looks natural to them, it's easy for them to use, and that's what we win at all the time. We are also very good at that infra magic, right? Of doing payments and all the options we have, and that's really our core, and without it we wouldn't have succeeded. But again and again we hear customers say, wow, how fun, how easy. I didn't have to explain to my mom, who is like the payments manager, because often it's this family thing — so I work in the store, and my mom or my dad does the payments. So we're very strong at that, we have a design group that I think is excellent, and we try very hard to keep that slickness, we're always saying 'delightful,' which is a very buzzword-y word, but it's very important to us. And sometimes it's not measurable, yeah, we can talk about that, we're still learning delightfulness too, but in the end the first payment — we celebrate it together with the user. And that's something that, certainly among the veteran competitors, is not in the mindset, there's nothing to do about it, it's necessary and you have to pay. So with us too it's necessary, but — we try to make it a bit more fun.

Eyal David: [06:06] And do you feel that competitors are emerging in the industry since Melio started? So I think we have a few competitors,

Arbel Zinger: [06:12] first, yes — the payments market and SMBs in the United States are growing endlessly, the opportunity there is enormous, again, these are numbers from last year: 32 million small businesses, growing at a crazy rate. Important to remember, in the United States too, almost anyone can be a small business, everyone files tax returns, and it's a lot of fun. So yes, competitors keep emerging, because it's a real problem, it really is a real problem — a person who starts a small business, starts it out of passion, right? I now want to work on my paper pulp, and sell it on Etsy, or sell it in the store I opened, and then I suddenly discover, oh, I've started a business, and anyone who's started a business, in Israel too, knows this. So now I need to file tax returns, and I need to issue invoices, and I need to pay suppliers. And for the first time, like, when you do it, you say, wait, but I actually just wanted to work on paper pulp, that's not at all what I wanted to do. And that's what we solve. We basically try to clear away from you the things you don't feel like doing. Honestly, I have a PM who put it very nicely, he says, you're a craftsman, you want to practice your craft, you don't want to be in the business of paying bills.

Eyal David: [07:22] Leave me alone with the... yeah. So Arbel comes to us also wearing another hat, from Tsarot BeHitech (Troubles in Hi-Tech), right?

Arbel Zinger: [07:29] Yes, so Eran Yaakovovich, who's also my best friend, and I founded Tsarot BeHitech. Tsarot BeHitech today, and for many years now, is the largest hi-tech workers' community in Israel, around 60,000 hi-tech workers. Which is like — if you look at the numbers, it's about half the industry, and maybe a bit more if you clean out production workers and all kinds of those. Believe it. Yeah, Tsarot BeHitech is one of those things that rolled along, you know, I'd really love to tell you we planned in advance, to become a place where people can learn about the industry, and complain without feeling judged. A bit, because they do judge, because it's the internet, and everyone judges on the internet. But it started as a joke, and it was really fun. So tell us in one sentence how it started. So Eran worked at Lightricks, one of the early employees there, and at first they were really bootstrap, a garage startup, no money, and when they started bringing in some money, they had a conversation with him, okay, what terms do you want? So he called me, and I was already a hi-tech veteran of five whole years, and we talked about very important things — vacation days, a training fund, health insurance, all the things that are bedrock assets of hi-tech terms, very quickly it degenerated to a gym, foosball, trips abroad, and all the troubles of hi-tech. It made us laugh, we went for it, we opened a page — back then it was pages, there were no groups yet — we put up a first post, 'I got an iPhone 12, with only 120 gigs.' It was probably fewer gigs at the time. A day later we had 2,000 followers, a day later 4,000, then 8,000, we grew very, very fast, we were both insanely surprised, and that's it, the first few years, we really ran it as a humorous page. Over time we saw that people use the comments, to talk. Like, hey, does anyone know which airline lounges are best if I mainly fly to New York? Now, that's a question that also has an answer in hi-tech, and also sometimes it's uncomfortable to talk about at home, with your friends who aren't in hi-tech, or with family. So Facebook had just come out with Groups, we were one of the first groups in Israel, we opened a community, today the community is much stronger than the page, and people basically share the information, and create some transparency, and we'll break the... 'I know someone,' and then I can ask them, hey, what's the difference between an analyst and a scientist and a BI, right?

Eyal David: [09:52] So there's an answer. So really, today, just out of genuine curiosity, what trends do you see? Because the industry has changed a bit,

Arbel Zinger: [09:58] have the terms changed since the period you're talking about? Look, that's a hard question, yeah? First of all, it's obviously a very hard time for juniors, very much so. Now, you could say it's always like this — it's not always like this. In 2021 it was a great time for juniors, I'll remind you, everyone opened bootcamps, everyone built this. A very hard time for juniors, a hard time also for mid-level. People in the top 10 percent, it'll always be easy for them, right? They'll always have — not exactly easy, but it'll always be easier for them to find work, and it really sucks. On the other hand, it also makes a lot of sense, because we're in a place the industry can't afford. We've generally moved as an industry from a place of growth — let's chase MAU, and let's see we have lots of clicks, to, well, we need to build real businesses. I think that's also a healthy thing in some way, for the industry — I mean, let's prove we're bringing value someone is willing to pay for, and not just that we're very attractive as Paris — that's a very big challenge for us, we can talk about it. Melio, something like two years ago, like most of the industry, moved from the MAU metric to the profit metric, GP, and our whole roadmap aligned to that.

Eyal David: [11:14] And what do you feel now — since we just dove into Melio and strategy — what do you feel now, that the pendulum is swinging back to us,

Arbel Zinger: [11:21] Noa, is it now going in a different direction, because... So I think it won't swing all the way back to the end, I do think that startups and large companies, will also have to prove more that they can create a healthy business, okay, that doesn't mean being profitable from day 1, also not from day 400, but it does mean there's a path to profit, let's call it. Until now that wasn't the interesting thing, many companies didn't even look at it — on the contrary, that the CAC would be whatever it would be, the cost of acquisition, that users would use us for free and have fun, and we'll figure it out, we'll understand how we make money — as a product manager that's also a lot of fun, it's like, I'll deliver the value, and we'll figure out at some point how to monetize it. On the other hand, it's also — it's not healthy for the industry.

Eyal David: [12:11] And it also depends what kind of product or product person you are, right? We also talked about it, and ultimately, if you're very connected to the business,

Arbel Zinger: [12:20] then it's hard for you to see it — it was hard for me to see it, at the companies I worked with. Let's take a second,

Eyal David: [12:26] so a break from the place we dove into — let's talk a bit about your bio. So you actually come from Safed originally, 8200, right? And you started in the industry — do you want to tell us about your first role? So I was a programmer, first of all, right?

Arbel Zinger: [12:42] Right after the army — I wasn't a technologist in the army — I got to a support desk, slash QA, at MyHeritage. I was one of the employees — I don't know — in the first few dozen, I don't remember the exact number, pretty quickly I managed to become a programmer there, I also studied computer science along the way, and... I love that you tell everything like this along the way — yeah, we jumped to the number 2,000 — it's all serendipity, it's all like — in Hebrew it's called 'hituntot,' it's a word — it was all luck, nothing to do about it, I had tons of luck in life, okay? From Safed to 8200, that's not trivial, really, sorry, I... and because of that I'm always very... there's a lot of talk about the unit, they only recruit this and that — for me they changed my life, I have no doubt, both the people I met, which helped a lot, and actually the fact that I got there. Eran and I — Eran is also from Safed, we're like hi-tech people from Safed, it's funny, there are many more, I've met a few more over the years, I got there, became a programmer, I was there a few years as a programmer, backend, very... I was, I don't know, five years at MyHeritage, things happen, I wanted to move on. A role of technical product manager had just opened up, I had no idea what it meant, I said okay, I'm good with people, I love to talk, I'm technical, and maybe. I joined NICE — so we only did good things, just kidding — like, we can talk about it, it's very gray, I've talked about it a lot in the past, I was there relatively early, there I was with a product management setup, which in hindsight — I didn't have these words back then, but in hindsight it was very inbound, meaning we received requirements, from account managers, and salespeople, and customers directly, I translated them into requirements for programmers, I argued a lot with programmers, in a good way, there were very, very strong people there, to this day, and basically, we pushed it into the product, over time, a bit along the way, I said, okay, I'm a product manager, this is maybe so I'll learn something,

Eyal David: [14:47] so you moved to the technical product manager role — how was it, what made you at MyHeritage say, okay, I want to move to being a PM?

Arbel Zinger: [14:54] Because it's probably not just the matter of... So honestly it was even less than that, mainly I wanted to leave, for all the reasons, yeah, they were in Bnei Atarot, and they moved to Or Yehuda, it was very far too, like, Bnei Atarot — it was very cool, but also very — my boss changed, there were all kinds of reasons, there's also a mood to look for work, I also looked for work as a programmer, in parallel from other sources, it's — again, we talked about luck, I was looking for something else, and someone I knew, told me, listen, there's a new, interesting company, come meet them — I met Guy Molcho, today he works with me at Melio, which was very cool, and he managed me, he was my first manager too, and I think I learned a ton from him about product management, and about go-to-market, and mainly in B2B, and that's it, and then I got there, I really want to say that it wasn't fully clear to me what it meant, I had the buzzword — working with people, prioritizing tasks, things I felt were good for me, but no, I didn't understand, that's the truth, in hindsight, luck — it seems to me, I was never as good a programmer as I am a good product manager, not in an arrogant way, but there was always a much better programmer than me, and in product management, I feel that I got it, like, this is a profession for me. Awesome, so can I, in a second,

Eyal David: [16:15] if we touch on it in the context of Melio — so okay, from there you continued to Microsoft, to Google, roughly in that order, right?

Arbel Zinger: [16:21] So from Melio I got to Microsoft, also under the conception of, I want to work at a big company, I want to learn, big processes, I got there at a period, I think very interesting, also by chance, nothing to say, like, whoever brought me to Microsoft, I'd worked at MyHeritage, told me listen, there's some opportunity — keep good relationships with people,

Eyal David: [16:42] that's a bit important. That's it, you said luck, and I'll stop here for now, but it's also related,

Arbel Zinger: [16:49] obviously you need the ability to seize the opportunity — I got there at a period, a bit after they bought Adallom, and Aorato, and basically there was a kind of — many startups, that try to embed into one package, at Microsoft — no, just as you don't buy Word, you buy Office, so you don't buy Adallom, you buy EMS, the security suite, today it's maybe called by another name, so I was a product manager at EMS, and the goal was basically to find the value, that comes from all the products together, or from several products together, and not — we called it 'better together,' right, that's always in corporate, there are the big players, and it was very interesting, because I didn't have a dev team per se, I worked mainly with product management, and I tried to explain to them why it's worthwhile for them to work together, and put out something together, to increase the shared value, it was very interesting, because it's also the first time — I'll talk about this maybe later — I got this value, of how you bring impact without direct development, or that you're not necessarily in the classic PM model, dev team, designer, I was in a place, I reported then to the deputy of the head, to Merav Bat-Kimayidz, cyber security, and we also did tons of projects, of finding the next thing in the market, in the security market, and then, at Microsoft, I learned a ton about how to work with salespeople, and how to work with industry seniors, in cyber — not hi-tech cyber, but really CISOs of Fortune 500 — and when you work with salespeople, at Microsoft, who are really probably among the best in the world, you get some feel for the struggles of the salespeople, that often PMs say, no, I don't want to build for salespeople, I want to build for the user, yeah, but then no one will sell it, and what did you do about it, which is also — sometimes I feel people are very sharp about, look only at the user, don't look at that, but it doesn't work in the real world, maybe it works that way when you're in very big B2B and stuff — I'll say it, I've said it many times, I built features, that I knew no one, or almost no one, would use, a bit — they significantly increased sales, so I got shamed for them — so I have a question, what else probably happened,

Eyal David: [19:03] is that along the way you also sharpened your sales abilities, and that probably also helped in the role you mentioned, curiosity — basically what are you measured on in such a role? A bit of a hard question.

Arbel Zinger: [19:17] Your role is really to move people, to connect them to some suite, to find that sweet spot? I think that ideologically, you want to be measured on the bottom-line impact — how much you sold, how many users used it, how many queries — you measure queries because, the contracts, the pricing is often by seats and such, often it was by how many product decisions, how many product decisions I influenced, by the way, a metric very similar to analysts, right? To a user researcher — what's their metric, how many decisions they influenced, maybe they reinforced the decision, didn't change it, that's fine too, it was very interesting, it was very nice, I do miss the direct impact, I'll say it, like, I really love taking things end to end, often I didn't have it end to end, so as long as I wasn't — it probably wasn't the perfect role for me. But you were good at it — you actually managed to make things happen like that? I love to believe so, I think I was good at it, we managed to put out all kinds of things, we managed to put out new features, even new products that started in my time, and we basically created a lot too, I think one of the things I did, which wasn't a direct impact on the product, but I think it was important, was bringing salespeople and customers closer to Israel. There's something very hard about being in Israel, and not in the United States or wherever, and one of the things that are like not products directly, but did contribute a lot — we started in Israel a concept of Cyber Days, where we really brought very, very, very big customers to Israel, and salespeople — there are advantages for both sides — who would come to Israel for a few days. So right, they'd come also to lectures and stuff, but it mainly gave product people the ability to talk to them directly, let's call it. And it was — starting from big conferences, and up to really bringing them for a full day, where we'd sit, I had to dress very nicely, I was that weird person, the PM walking around in this. A suit, yeah? Not a suit, let's not get carried away, but a button-down and non-jeans pants, and we'd sit on the floor — today they've already moved offices to the Nahala floor — and we'd bring PMs who come all day, come in and out, ask questions, demo, and I think it gave second-order value, which is very big. Open — sounds lovely.

Eyal David: [21:36] By the way, impact without engineers. Really, really, there's something to it. Now basically from here,

Arbel Zinger: [21:42] you moved to Google? Yes, I moved to Google, I was in Search, on the team responsible for crisis response, basically what happens is, when something bad happens — it started with fires, earthquakes, pretty quickly it became COVID, and that was the biggest disaster, that... Google dealt with, as a search engine and information provider. It was a crazy period, yeah? My daughter was just born too. That's it, it's... it's hard for me to talk about it, yeah? I could talk about it for a whole episode, but... it's a very interesting event. It's also learning to move very, very fast, inside a very big corporate that doesn't have... which was different from Microsoft, in that house? It wasn't different — it was different from Microsoft, but somewhere in COVID, we had to move much more. I mean, if features are a matter of, in the best case, months... in this role too. Yeah. So suddenly, it needs to be — every day we learned new things. I'll remind you and all of you, what it was like in COVID at the beginning — we didn't know anything. We didn't know the symptoms, we didn't know how you get infected, everyone was cleaning surfaces, and talking about Tuvia Tzafir, who got infected on a bus, right? From the surfaces. Every aspect of smell and taste, that happened only in March, or something like that, it sounds strange to us, but COVID started in December, or in January. It started in China even before, but... it started in the world Google served. Yeah, yeah. So, we had to learn to move fast, we had to know how we provide real information. Real not in the sense of fake news, in the sense of no one knows anything. Really, everyone thought many things that weren't true. Masks — masks came only around March too, I'll remind you of this, it sounds strange to us today, no one had the concept, there was all the talk about the strange medications, and, no one knew anything. And it was also very — when you think about it, the symptoms, how you limit, how you don't get infected and stuff, fine, that's relatively international. But what about restrictions? Restrictions are hyper-local, right, it's not a country, it's not even a state, it's at the county level, sometimes at the neighborhood. The restrictions in Tel Aviv were different from the restrictions in Bnei Brak. So there was a lot to learn, and you acted fast, and just remind me, and us,

Eyal David: [23:59] basically, when you joined Google, what was that motivation, that... again, when a person changes jobs,

Arbel Zinger: [24:07] there are many things that influence, but I also wanted to enter the world of B2C, a bit — I had very B2B experience, B2G even, I wanted to work in Tel Aviv, which sounds funny, but that's what's important, and I wanted — I'd heard very good things about Google, as a PM, they said, listen, it was a school for PMs — at Microsoft, as I said, at least back then, and in the place I was, it didn't feel to me like... I learned a ton of things, but not... in hindsight it also had an influence, but it wasn't pure product, it's a lot of things, it turns out. Cool, yeah. And now basically, fast forward to Melio.

Eyal David: [24:46] Yeah, I was also at Lightricks along the way. I was also at Lightricks. Cool. So basically you and Eran worked together — also worth mentioning, no?

Arbel Zinger: [24:53] Yes, we worked together something like a year, it was in Jerusalem, during COVID, we moved from home. And there you really did classic B2C. Yes, I was VP Product at Lightricks, in the video field. And that was really a jump to VP Product too.

Eyal David: [25:05] Right. Also worth mentioning, thanks. And basically, from there to Melio, so today you actually manage a few... I was consistent, every two and a half years. Really, but not for nothing. I do notice a pattern here too, we also talked about it, that it seems you have, every time you enter something, both a goal and some motivation that leads you — so I think that's wonderful, and maybe we'll touch on it later in other contexts. So basically at Melio today, the teams you work with — what does it look like? What are the skills you look for most

Arbel Zinger: [25:35] in a product manager at your place? Good question. So first of all I'll say we did — it's really standardization. I mean, I don't... we have a PM Ladder, that's what we imported from big companies, also the person I came with who managed me, who came from Google, and we have people from Facebook and stuff. We have a Ladder defined for PMs, and we know at every level what we're looking for, and it divides into a few things. First of all we look for the scope the person can hold. Scope can be the number of programmers, it can be, is it a feature, how many features, a whole product, maybe, you know, a suite of products, that they'll lead. Impact — which is mainly we measure on past impact, when we recruit a new person. Real impact. Meaning, don't tell me, I wrote specs — everyone writes specs, tell me what you did. You come, X, I did Y, I achieved 20% growth, amazing. And by the way, a lot of people don't do this. They don't say what they did, what the impact was. Because it's like programmers — you write Java, great, everyone writes Java, maybe Java is old-school. Everyone writes React. What did you do? I wrote something that reduced by... amazing, that's much more important. The next part, after scope and impact, is really about skills. I look for people who communicate excellently. Who can communicate big ideas, also to seniors, also to customers, also to partners, and also go down to the smallest details, when you need to communicate it to designers and developers. So communication is something very, very important, in writing, in speech — it seems to me one of the most significant skills, it's our work tool. I look for people who can be leaders. Leaders isn't managers, leaders are people who — as I said, I mentioned this to you, that a product manager doesn't need to give orders, they need to make people want to act. That's the right thing. Product sense, that's this high-level thing, what I look for a lot, I look for people who can — what's the word in Hebrew? Empathy for users. Who can identify with the user. Who can understand, wait, what's going on, who can understand the real problem, and not just solve it, right, which shows me product sense, real product sense, in my opinion, not easy. And then there are all kinds of hard skills too, I'm sure I'm forgetting things, but analytics — in the end it's a skill I need, I need a person to be able to look at a graph, understand what's going on there. I need... you can give a metric to a feature. You can give a metric to an event, right? That's the skill — how do you measure yourself. So that's most of the things, I'm sure I forgot one, it's really organized with us, we rank by every such thing, both in performance and in interviews. That's a lot — specifically for you, what's the most critical thing, among all the things you listed? That they be human beings, just kidding. Do you measure that? No, it's, you know, it's diversity. It's a matter of diversity, it's for every profession. I don't know how to put a weight on it, really. It's also... I need the people who can understand the problem, get into the head of the user or the market, understand what the opportunity is, put a number on it, manage to excite a team — we're looking for the total package. Yeah? Again, we talked about juniors earlier, right? So we don't recruit — we look for people with experience, who've done it, who've led things. Every PM at our place has at least one team. We really believe in this squad of PM — team versus designer. Again, not for everyone, but that's the aspiration.

Eyal David: [29:26] It's very hard for me to point... so I'll ask it differently. What's the thing, if you can share, that you work on most with your product managers?

Arbel Zinger: [29:34] So that also differs a lot from one to another. I do work on it with everyone. It's not just the product manager — to be an impact driver. Which is something very hard to come with.

Eyal David: [29:42] Which is something that mostly comes from a lot, doesn't come from the organization? So I think that also

Arbel Zinger: [29:49] comes from the organization. In the end, I said, we really measure on impact. Like, great that you stopped the 20 features. What happened? That's also very me. I very much love impact. There's no... I love to ask people what a good day looks like. Like, what... I'm kind of curious, what's interesting? You gave me the next question. There are those who love, you know, to talk with users, to solve some hard problem with programmers, to give a killer presentation. I love to come, to see a graph on something we stopped a month ago, and see the rise. So that's the joy. So there's the joy. So I'm constantly putting into people's heads the... to be impact. Impact, impact, impact. What will happen in the end? You're working on a feature, what's its impact? And it's not just product managers. Obviously product managers,

Eyal David: [30:33] must hold that before their eyes, and constantly talk about it. But it's like the example you gave of that same developer, who suddenly basically saved. Awesome. So once you really go after... after metrics, and after things you can move, it probably also exposes bigger opportunities. Right. Is that something that leads you throughout your career? Yes, I look for impact.

Arbel Zinger: [30:52] Like really, I arrive at a company, I often, certainly when I'm new, even before I'm in the day-to-day, let's call it, I try to understand where the company is going. Now, that often depends on management. First of all management needs to give us the goals. The goals don't have to be numbers, by the way. They can be... we want to triple our profits, we want to expand to this market, and we want to, I don't know, compete with someone. Excellent. I, as a product manager, certainly a senior one, need to translate that into product metrics. Okay, profit is easy, we said triple. What does it mean to expand to a market? What penetration am I looking for? How many users? Say, just, ten thousand, in this new market? Amazing, here's a metric. And then I basically take it further, and it should percolate to the teams, and it's not just PMs, even if PMs are generally supposed to lead it — what do I do to advance it? Every feature you work on, every line in the roadmap, in the backlog, in the planning, no matter how you work, needs to advance the company's metrics, one way or another. If it doesn't do that, let's talk about it. Like, in most cases that means you're working on the wrong thing. Sometimes it means that — either it does advance it, it's just very hard to explain, or maybe the metrics need updating. Legit, sometimes you find an opportunity, that management didn't see. To tell the truth, rare, really. Not in that sense. But it happened to you. It happened, of course. And how do you move it?

Eyal David: [32:11] So management didn't see it, you don't have resources for the matter. Right. So how do you move it? How did you do it?

Arbel Zinger: [32:17] Politics, right? Politics in the sense of the art of the possible. You talk with anyone who can contribute. We now have some opportunity, that indirectly touches the company's direct metrics, it very much affects our bottom line, and it has no owner. You know, the company isn't built — we try to be very built by this kind of matrix, a KPI here, a KPI there, whatever. So my PM who led it, said to me, listen, here, we found some opportunity, I don't have — there's nothing to do, I said to him, wait, what does 'do' mean? A lot of impact. Prepare a presentation. Start doing, you know, a roadshow. Present it to Finance, in the end it's on the bottom line and to FP&A. Get a buy-in from them, excellent. Present it to the CTO, present it here, and then we had a big meeting. Now, we decided not to do it right now, because — we're in planning now, as always in planning. But it came up to everyone's mind, and everyone knows about it. And in the next round, maybe we'll do it. How do you plan it? Like, the whole point is, find impact, forget for a moment who'll do it, that's not interesting. Like, it is interesting, obviously. A company in the end has limited resources, but often in prioritization, the first thing PMs do, is first of all look at the size of the resource they have. I have four programmers, that's what they'll do. And I try very hard to clear that away, I try very hard to say, wait, where is there impact? And then we'll figure it out. And if not, then that's also fine, but at least we'll know what impact we're missing, that's something I really miss. I mean, sometimes there are many PMs who say, if only we had done. And maybe, why didn't you say? In planning you often present at the end, and anyone who does planning experiences this, here's what we'll do in the next round. Amazing — but what won't we do? Why doesn't anyone show that? What won't we do? What are we losing? And how much will it cost us to do it? And when I say it, everyone says, right, obviously we need to do that. But I've been at many companies, and in many of them they don't do it. In the best case they do a kind of above-the-line, below-the-line, and there are another three features below the line, that from the start there was little chance they'd do. Fine, what did we do about it? Like, you're short two programmers, to bring in another, I don't know, 600 thousand dollars a month. I'm going far. Write that, you can. I don't know, maybe we'll recruit them. What's certain is they cost less than 600 thousand dollars a month. Right, no, I just exaggerated on purpose. An excellent example. And is that something you really feel at any of the organizations you were at? That it's limiting? I think so. I think that often, certainly people a bit more junior,

Eyal David: [34:51] they very much come to execute. Oh, sorry, I'll correct. I didn't mean in the direction of resources, that's what I meant. From the fact that you suddenly find something, the company is focused on something, and you find or one finds basically some thing that basically bypasses or aims at

Arbel Zinger: [35:06] something else? So look, if it happens all the time, then there's a problem, right? But every so often you find something like that. Every so often you talk with some customer, you understand there's some opportunity. Every so often you find some segment, maybe small, but very impactful, that we didn't look at, and you can extract something special from it, with relatively minimal investment. So it happens. It happens relatively often. I would say there's at least one such thing per round, that's very big, and I try very hard to encourage this mindset of, find the opportunities, and surface them, and even, you know, good ones also take it a few steps forward, understand what needs to be done to make them materialize. But don't limit yourselves. What does it matter how many programmers you have? Find impact without them. There's a lot of impact that we did without programmers at Melio. Starting from writing better articles in the FAQ, which sounds like product — it's not just the output of programmers, it's also something people forget. Write a training program for salespeople. It might have a thousand times more impact than that same feature you put out. And sometimes product managers forget this. And often it's also the fault of their managers. In terms of the product manager's responsibility, it's to work with their team and deliver features. But that's not right. The product manager's goal is to advance their metric. That's really right, what you're saying, and I connect with it very, very much.

Eyal David: [36:33] We're approaching the end of the episode here, and I also found this a good point to stop, because of this proposal. So you mentioned that right now juniors are having a very hard time. Yes. So instead of — where you're looking, do you have some recommendation? How can one still enter, or how can one still break in? Look, it's...

Arbel Zinger: [36:55] I say this a lot. It's easier to get to manager... product manager isn't the first job. I really believe in this. I think that... there are product managers for whom it's their first job. Obviously, and there are good ones too. Generally I see it as the second job, that people who were in the industry, who know it a bit more, find it much easier to reach the role. It's from within a company. That's my proposal to anyone who wants to manage product — enter a company in an overlapping role, if you're a programmer, if you programmed, if you're an analyst, and try as much as possible to stick to the product, and try to give insights. First, see if it really interests you, because — as I said earlier, a product manager, I'm good with people, it doesn't speak to everyone. Really, most of my work isn't a lot of the things that people who want to be product managers say they want to do. And that's the best way. It's simply the proposal that a lot — basically, and what else can I say? Yeah. At the end of the day. Just try to live it from a role you can actually enter. Now, it's obvious there's some jump here. First, you need to have some ability. Yeah, there are cases. You entered a company with no experience at all, without this,

Eyal David: [38:10] it happens. But... you can still touch the product from within a role. From a customer-support role, or from another role,

Arbel Zinger: [38:16] it was easy to get to know the company's course, and how a company works, I think. I agree, it's very, very hard. Again, not that it'll be easy, yeah?

Eyal David: [38:24] It's hard. What can you do? Shameless plug, we have an episode, 'Why does everyone want to be a product manager?' from Tsarot BeHitech. It's really, like,

Arbel Zinger: [38:32] everyone wants to be a product manager, because it also looks cool, come on, it sounds like we make decisions, and do cool things, meet users, and impact. First, it's not for everyone, it really is, I have women programmers who were, like, really, doing everything to not be product managers. Yeah. And two, it's also not easy. Really. Maybe once it was easier. Today, the profession has become a profession. If once it was just the title, then today it's really like this, totally. A craft, it's — I talk about it a lot with people — I'm looking for a product manager with experience in cyber. In fintech. Why? Like, if a programmer moves from cyber to fintech, that's not the point. So sometimes it's true, it helps. Domain expertise helps, and there are even places where it might really be a blocker. In most cases I look for people who are first of all product people. They have the skill. Cool. Another question,

Eyal David: [39:23] and last. What do you wish for Arbel in ten years?

Arbel Zinger: [39:29] Look, listen, bro, be — yeah? And maybe it's not right, and I just think it. It can always be. I have a daughter, and she's four and a half, and I'm most fulfilled when I'm with her. On the level of like, wow, maybe not stay-at-home husband, but father mainly, but, I do think a lot about leaving, and consulting a bit, and being at home. On the other hand, when I think about it, I'll really miss the final impact. Yeah, the problem with consulting is that you don't see the bottom line sometimes. Oh, not at all. Not at all, but it depends what your agency is. I'll put it differently. You're not the owner end to end sometimes. I mainly wish for myself to be calm. Let's put it that way. There's in me, and certainly in many people, always some sense of pursuit — that's a big word, but like, like I must reach something. And sometimes it's not logical, yeah? There are many things I no longer need to chase. Everything's fine. I've reached a good place, I work, people know me, great, I'm good at my profession, they appreciate me and stuff. I'd be very happy to let go of that. And I think one of the ways to do it is to spend much more time. With my daughter.

Eyal David: [40:47] Right, highly recommend. The most impact I've done in my life, easy.

Arbel Zinger: [40:52] That's it. I think it's mainly, to be more calm like this. To take things a bit more easy. In general. I'm not a person, like, it's not that I'm very rigid, but I'd be happy to be more chill. There are people I envy for their ability to be a bit more chill.

Eyal David: [41:08] I can tell you from experience, it's a matter of work, I'm in this process. Well, so I wish that for you too. And it was really fun. It was, for me too. And see you next time. Thank you very much. Bye. Hey friends, thanks for listening. If you found this podcast valuable, you can subscribe, follow us, of course for more episodes, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other app. Of course, if you didn't find us on some app, I'd be happy for you to write to us. We'd be very happy for five stars, on any platform, and for you to follow us, so more listeners can be exposed to us, and find the podcast. You can also find the previous episodes, on any app, or on the YouTube channel, we have links in the description. Until next time, come on, be efficient, and bye bye.